Noon Solar Bags our Badge of Honor

This week, I’m dreaming of beautiful leather accessories and beautiful ecommerce design. Noon Solar wins this week’s Badge of Honor for making my dreams come true! This retailer’s online store is a prime example of how breaking the mold can pay off in a big way. The design and layout of the site is anything but standard, but it still offers seamless navigation and strong visual appeal. Let’s take a look!

When you arrive on the site, you immediately notice how different the design is from most ecommerce sites. Rather than feature a top navigation menu, they have pushed all the navigation options to the left of the page. This leaves the majority of the page open to feature a huge image. In this case, when I selected the Solar collection, the site shows a detail image of the solar panel they use on their bags. Users can even click to find out more information, which gives a deeper insight about the product and the company that allows shoppers to connect and engage. This is a very cool strategy.

Once a shopper is in a collection, they will see thumbnail images of the various products. When you mouse over these, you can see the names of the items and a short line of text that describes the bag. This is cool way to show people a quick run-down of what’s in each collection. It’s such a nice and simple way to browse!

Clicking on a product gets you even more information, and a larger image. The price and add to cart button are prominently displayed at the top, followed by the more detailed description. It’s all the standard product page stuff you want, just organized in a unique way. Really the best part about this whole navigation is how seamless it is. Users never have to hit the back button. Every page is accessible from any page you’re on.

Noon Solar makes innovative bags, so it fits their brand to have an innovative design on their ecommerce store. It’s not to say that this site is perfect. When I went through the checkout, I ran into some issues. But when we’re talking about design, and ways to create a look that stands out while still offering great navigation and usability, Noon Solar really nailed it. It earned them this Badge of Honor, and we hope more brands will follow their example.